how i did this math
this is not financial advice. it's planning-grade decision support, built from a mix of real public data and disclosed modeling assumptions. every number below either traces to a named source, or is flagged as a directional estimate — i'm not going to dress up a guess as a government statistic.
the honest annual number
most cost-of-living tools stop at "here's what you'd spend differently." that's the amateur version. the honest number also subtracts the change in what you'd earn — a raise that doesn't cover a bigger cost increase still leaves you worse off, and a pay cut can turn even a cheaper city into a loss. the formula: spend delta − pay delta. positive means it costs you money every year; negative means it saves you money every year.
your own numbers, projected
the category breakdown starts from the monthly amount you told the tool you spend today — not a generic city average. each category is projected to the destination using the ratio between that city's cost index and your current city's, category by category. taxes are handled separately, as a rough delta between each state's top marginal income tax rate against your income — not a real tax-liability calculation (no brackets, no deductions, no local/city income tax).
source
The overall cost index per city comes from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis's Regional Price Parities by Metropolitan Area, as published by the Tax Foundation. The category-level splits (housing, groceries, transportation, utilities, healthcare, childcare) are modeled, not independently sourced per category — this tool's data documentation lists the exact multipliers and the reasoning behind them. State tax rates are the Tax Foundation's 2026 top marginal rate table.
the village question
no cost-of-living tool prices the layer no invoice reaches — the people you'd be close to, or leaving. this tool doesn't try to put a dollar figure on that either. instead it's a direct, explicit line in your result: what you rated your current support system, against what you rated the destination (or, if you're using the "tell me where" path, how close a candidate city sits to the people you named). it's weighted into the verdict like everything else, but it's never allowed to hide inside the honest number — you should always be able to see it separately.
your field's market there
career strength per city is a qualitative, directional call grounded in well-established regional industry concentrations (banking in Charlotte, government in DC, tech in Austin, and so on) — it is not real-time job posting data or BLS location-quotient statistics. treat it as "does this field have real gravity here," not a guarantee of a specific salary.
moving cost and break-even
the moving-cost estimate is a broad planning-grade range (distance tier × household size × DIY-vs-movers), plus a move-in allowance sized to your own projected destination rent — not a quote from any specific mover. break-even is only ever shown as a real payback period when the honest annual number is a genuine savings. when it's a net cost, the tool says so plainly instead of manufacturing a break-even that doesn't exist.
the verdict
your four priorities (cost, career, village, lifestyle & place) are normalized into weights, then applied to four 0-100 sub-scores to produce one composite score. close calls are named as close calls, on purpose — that's exactly the situation where an outside, human read is worth more than another number.
the destination isn't the only variable here. the timing, the priorities you brought in, and what you do with the ops checklist all move the outcome more than another decimal place of precision ever would.
← run your own numbers